I’ve French doors leading to my front deck and the windows face west.  At 8:15 P.M. the setting sun is peering through the pines and oaks and illuminating my sheer curtains.  Sunset and sunrise are my favorite points of the day, no matter how brief.  Rarely do I see the sunrise as my work day doesn’t start until noon.  When I worked the morning trick I used to take a break during commercials or news to go outside and watch the light rise.  One morning I filled in for our morning host here in Delaware and did the show live at the beach.  It was late December and the sky was clear and I watched the sun slowly lift above the horizon and reflect across the ocean and I returned the greeting and spoke to God. 

Tomorrow I’ll be up early.  I’m a guest on a radio show in Guymon, Oklahoma.  Long story.  Essentially I invited myself to appear on the show when I dropped the station owner a message and asked some questions about Guymon, population just below 15,000.  A series of emails followed and our stations not only have the same frequencies but the same sales consultant and I’m going to help market Guymon tomorrow.  I’ve done some on-air segments about America’s best places.  The best place to live, the best place to raise kids, the best place to find a job.  Indianapolis and Albuquerque always pop up but not many parts of the Oklahoma panhandle.  The inspiration was inclusion on one of these lists for Friendship, New York.  It was the town seven miles to the east of where I grew up.  If Friendship had been a relative we would’ve locked it in the attic. 

What makes a best place?  In Friendship it’s people selling homes at bargain prices or giving them away.  Guymon appears on no less than three separate lists over the past three years.  Even with a deep recession there is virtually no unemployment in Guymon.  The meth labs have all been outsourced to Mexico and the cost of living is low.  Being a broadcast guy I wrote the radio station and asked what made the place special.  Tomorrow I’m on the morning show. 

Life here offers its own charms.  Wednesday morning I had breakfast at Bob Evans with our state legislature’s House Majority Leader.  We’re political opposites and the meeting was brokered by a friend in hopes of finding some common ground.  I guess we did.  Three hours later I left for work and missed a walk along the beach.  Before I left the house I put on a new pair of walking shoes expecting an hour long meeting but we got to talking and then sharing stories and telling jokes and the time evaporated.  We share some similarities in our personal histories.  Details of the conversation, however, are private and even with my very public life there are some stories I don’t share.

He didn’t tell his wife he was meeting me.  She’s not a fan.  My significant other has the same feelings for him. The redhead has been busy this week.  Did I tell you she convinced me to start feeding a stray cat?  Then it became two cats and then the second had kittens.  She wants to trap them and get them to shelters.  We were looking for them Saturday when she found a Blue Jay that had fallen or been pushed from its nest.  There were no signs of other birds sounding an alarm.  The bird spent some time here and then went home with her.  Now she takes it to work and the creature is standing and the eyes have opened and it demands to be fed.  Often.  There is a bait shop around the corner from the house and it sells Canadian night crawlers for 2.50 a dozen.  The worms came a long way to be gobbled by a bird. 

And life goes on and the sun has slipped below the horizon and tomorrow it’s scheduled to rise with or without us. 

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